Thanks for your enriching comment, Gavin. Just wanted to add to Jason’s response that, unfortunately, there is no consensus on whether various features potentially indicative of consciousness would be adaptive for any conscious individual, regardless of a species’ evolutionary history and its adaptive needs.
Complicating things even further, we do not even have such thing as a ‘universal’ intelligence measuring instrument for humans–cultural differences in intelligence determine results country by country. The above points out that we need more research that tells us both criteria for understanding which features might be more robust for detecting consciousness, and forms of measurement that are sensitive to relevant differences between different groups of individuals.
Thanks for your enriching comment, Gavin. Just wanted to add to Jason’s response that, unfortunately, there is no consensus on whether various features potentially indicative of consciousness would be adaptive for any conscious individual, regardless of a species’ evolutionary history and its adaptive needs.
Complicating things even further, we do not even have such thing as a ‘universal’ intelligence measuring instrument for humans–cultural differences in intelligence determine results country by country. The above points out that we need more research that tells us both criteria for understanding which features might be more robust for detecting consciousness, and forms of measurement that are sensitive to relevant differences between different groups of individuals.